I walk through a cemetery where I needn’t worry about social distancing. The people I pass there don’t care. It’s a strange feeling walking by markers that say that someone lived at such and such a time. It’s just names, dates and a few lines that represent someone’s life.

As I walk out behind the cemetery into the barren hills that only the hardiest shrubs grow on, I wonder at the layers of rock and sediment that constitute the odd lava like slopes that have been carved by millennia of rain and erosion.

In this strange wonderland I explore. Occasionally wondering what would happen if I fell and hurt myself. Would they ever find me ? I make sure to take my phone.

It’s a odd dichotomy. Cresting a hill to see a Walmart. Nestled into the side of such ancient land. A cemetery on one side and the graveyard of shopping on the other. How many small retailers has Walmart killed?

Eventually I return home to live in a house that is only partially mine. It will sell and I will live somewhere else, but for now I think, write and feel. What else can I do. Oh ya and try to dodge COVID 19.

It’s the feeling part that is the hardest. I am used to using my brain, not my heart. I am closer to the cemetery than not, but still I struggle with my feelings, and can I survive without suppressing them.

I want my gravestone inscription to say “here lies a man who felt” and perhaps my words will last longer than me. My legacy. My somewhat accurate description of how I felt, subject to interpretation.